The proposed studies will use behavioral methods to assess deficits in taste detection, discrimination, taste sensitivity, and taste preference in rats with lesions of thalamic, amygdala, and neocortical taste centers of the forebrain. Behavioral tests are designed to provide separate measures of sensory (gustatory) capacity and hedonic value of tastants. For detection, discrimination and psychophysical tests, rats will be trained on an operant task in which tastants provide cues for discriminative responding. To assess taste preferences, rats are trained on a free operant choice procedure. A second experiment will test the effects of gustatory neocortical lesion on memory for tastes. In general, these experiments are designed to evaluate the hypothesis that the thalamic- neocortical taste system plays an important role in fine discriminative performance while the taste projections to the amygdala are important in determining the hedonic value or tastants.